Dogasu@ 02:08 JST -- Well, it was a chore
to get through, but I've finally finished all the comparisons for the
Don Battle arc! Check out my essay on the tournament's final
episode, "Club Battle Finale:
A
Hero's Outcome!"

I genuinely like the Nyasu arc that follows, so I will hopefully be
able to pump those comparisons out a bit quicker.
Pokemon + Nobunaga's
Ambition
January 14th, 2012

Dogasu@ 13:37 JST -- I've added the box
art and release date for Pokemon +
Nobunaga's Ambition to the Nintendo DS page of the
Video
Games section. While I was at it, I went through all the links to
the official sites on that DS page and updated the ones that no longer
worked.

I've also updated the List of TV
Episodes with a new Japanese title and the correct title for
English episode 1447.

Finally, this month's CoroCoro Comics
announced that they'll be revealing information about Keldeo a pokemon whose
identity nobody knows about appearing in this summer's movie.
DVD Guide updateJanuary 8th, 2012

Dogasu@ 14:30 JST -- The DVD Guide has been updated with the first
releases of 2012!

The first of these releases is Viz's first DP Sinnoh League Victors box
sets. The first set is due on February 28th and the second set is
due on May 1st. There will only be twelve episodes left in the
season after that, so I'm assuming Viz will throw those on a third and
final box set and call it a day. I wish these were Blu-Ray
releases instead of DVD,
but I'm sure that Viz is only allowed to put out these
standard definition discs due to whatever contracts they have with the
Japanese rights holders.

In non-DVD news, I've put up another video!
This video shows the "data broadcast" thing that TV-Tokyo's started
doing with Best Wishes and
should hopefully help illustrate what it actually is. The
network's website has a more detailed description of what this whole
"data broadcast" stuff is about here,
for those of you who can read Japanese.

Finally, here's Thursday's Gil Thorp,
which brings up Pokémon again for some strange, strange reason.

I've got a few projects I'm working on at the moment, and hopefully
I'll have some of them ready to post real soon."The Club Battle Hearts of Fury,
TPCI Versus Awkward Syntax!"
January 3rd, 2012

Next up, I've updated the front page to the Movies
& Specials Guide! The older version of that page just had
everything lumped together in an order that didn't really make any
sense, so I've moved a few things around and hopefully made everything
easier to find. Speaking of movies, I've updated the page for Kyurem vs. The Sacred Swordsman
with the theatrical posters, the movie's release date, a mini synopsis
based on what's been revealed so far, and bios
for the main pokemon who will appear in the film.

Finally, I've made two updates to the Video Games section. One,
I've added the English language title and American release date for PokéPark
2. Two, I've added information about the upcoming DS
game Pokemon + Nobunaga's Ambition.
I'm particularly excited about this game and plan to pick it up on day
one.

This is pretty old by now, but in case you haven't seen this, jump to
the 3:28 mark:

Here I am, weeks later, and I still
find this whole thing to be hilarious. Between this and that
South Korean professor using DRAGON
BALL to predict the trends of consumers and voters in the coming
year, it seems like Japanese animation and politics are, for some
reason, starting to work together. Hilarious.
Let's check my predictions for last year
January 2nd, 2012

Every year, I do a write-up for this site's anniversary on January
31st. I like to post
a bunch of predictions of
what I think is going to happen in the coming year and then go back and
see how many of them I got right, and that's what I'm going to do
today. Here's what I
thought was going to happen in 2011, as originally posted here:

The Best Wishes! TV series is going to
have to slow down at some
point. Otherwise, Satoshi will be facing the eighth Gym Leader
before the end of the year. Since Kanto slowed down after the
sixth gym, I think Isshu will do the same.

It actually slowed down after the third gym, with 26 episodes between
the Arti battle and the Kamitsure battle. So I'll give myself
points for predicting the slowdown but then take them back for being
wrong about which gym the slowdown will start.

Unfortunately, it seems like the series is picking up the pace again,
as there are only ten episodes between the Kamitsure and Yakon
battles. So, there's that.

I think there will be a total of fifteen
Best Wishes! episodes released
in 2011 in which the Rocket-Dan do not appear at all. We’ve
already had two Rocket-less episodes so far, so I don’t think that
number is so far-fetched at all.

Last year had twenty episodes without the trio,
which is five more than I predicted. And in most of the episodes
they do appear in, they're
only around for like 30 seconds, if that.

I love how the writers have "changed the Rocket trio for the better"
and then never give them any screentime, ever. It's like they're
determined to give as little to the "the BW Rocket trio is so much
better!" crowd as possible.

Now that a handful of Best Wishes!
episodes are out, I think Japan
might finally try releasing the series on DVD again. Now's as
good a time as ever, right?

I also think this will be the year we’ll
see our first Pocket
Monsters-related Blu-Ray. It's about damn time, right?

Yup! In Japan, the two Victini movies were released on Blu-Ray at
the end of the year. The US, meanwhile, got a disc with Pokémon Heroes and Destiny Deoxys coupled together,
for some strange reason. What's nice is that the U.S. and Japan
are both in the same Blu-Ray region (Region A), so American Blu-Ray
players can play the Victini movie and Japanese Blu-Ray players can
play the Heroes / Deoxys disc.

Since Viz seems to be releasing
Pokémon DVDs again, I think
we’ll actually see a home release of Zoroark - Master of Illusions
before the end of the year. I also think they’ll finish up DP
Galactic Battles and start releasing DP Sinnoh League Victors on DVD
before the end of the year.

The Zoroark movie came out in September, and the final DP Galactic
Battles set came out in November. DP Sinnoh League Victors,
however, isn't coming out until next month.

As far as video games go, we already know
we’ll be getting Battle and
Get! Pokemon Typing DS in the spring. It was also recently
announced that a 3DS and a Wii game are in the works. I think the
3DS game will be a spin-off (Pokemon Snap 2, please?) and the Wii game
will be a game similar to Coliseum and XD. I don’t think we’ll
see any main series Pocket Monsters games released for the 3DS’ e-store
anytime this year (or ever, really), but I do think we’ll possibly see
the puzzle games released for the service.

The 3DS game was Super Pokemon Scramble, which
really isn't as terrible as the Internet would have you believe.
I would have loved a Pokemon Snap 2,
but I think it's pretty obvious by now that Nintendo has no interest in
producing a sequel. The Wii game was PokePark 2 ~ Beyond the World,
which isn't anything like the GameCube RPGs, so minus one point for
me. None of the Pocket Monsters
have been released on the 3DS' e-shop yet, but I still stand by my
assertion that we'll only ever see the puzzle games available for
download.

Viz will continue releasing Adventures,
and will maybe release the
manga adaptation of the Zorro’ark movie, but I think that’ll be
it. I don’t see the company releasing any other series in
2011. I can see Viz putting the series online for their iPad app,
though.

I was right about everything except the
iPad app. Inoue Momota's adaptation of the Zorro'ark movie came
out in the US on September 20th, 2011, and that was the only non-Adventures title released by Viz
all year.

On the music side of things, we’ll get TV
Animation Pocket Monsters
Original Soundtrack Best 1997-2010 Vol. 2, a soundtrack for Victini and
the Dark Hero, Zekrom, and at least three releases for the ending theme
(regular, special edition, and regular version + DVD). I also
think it’s likely we’ll have a new opening and ending theme premiere
before the end of the year, so we’ll be getting CD singles for those as
well.

So close! Everything there happened
exactly as I said it would except for the debut of a new opening theme,
something we still don't see any signs of. I'm not too bothered
by it and actually wouldn't mind if they stuck with Best Wishes! for the entirety of
the series' run, but I know I'm in the minority there. I also
missed predicting the Matsumoto Rika compilation CD, but I won't be too
hard on myself since that sort of came out of left field.

I'll post my predictions for 2012 in my
twelve year anniversary write-up later in the month.